After years of seeing draft-n wireless products, the IEEE finally ratified the standard this summer. Now the Wi-Fi Alliance has created a new certification program complete with new logos. "Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n builds on the success of our draft-n certification program and marks a point of maturity in 802.11n technology," said Edgar Figueroa, Executive Director of The Wi-Fi Alliance.

The new Wi-Fi certification program includes all the requirements from the draft standard, with some additional optional features. The optional features include support for transmission of up to three spatial streams, STBC encoding to increase reliability, A-MPDU packet aggregation, and channel coexistence for the 40MHz operation in the 2.4GHz band.

The new, longer logo shows all the standards that a device supports. The new certification program also allows products to indicate if they support optional features. The new logos should even show up on devices that were previously draft-n, as many were certified for the full standard.

If you can’t afford to upgrade your network to 802.11n Draft N 2.0, you might consider purchasing Trendnet’s Easy-N-Upgrader TEW-637AP. Instead of throwing your existing router in the trash, plug it into the Easy-N-Upgrader access point to gain many of the benefits of a Draft N router for about half the price.

The Linksys WRT600N is the first 802.11n draft 2.0 router we’ve tested that can operate on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands simultaneously. It’s also the most expensive Wi-Fi router we’ve ever tested.